Originally reported by Discovery News in their blog on 12 September 2011.
The Belizean Barrier Reef has been suffering for decades. El Nino caused massive die outs of the primary two coral species, then in 2009 a magnitude 7.3 quake rattled the Caribbean and scent a large section into deeper waters. Now, about half of the reefs are gone, reduced to sediment and coral skeletons.
This die off has led to consideration of how natural disasters should be addressed in conservation strategies by a team from the Florida Institute of Technology led by Richard Aronson. He urges survival planning for conservation to be not just span 3 generations (200-ish years), but to think instead on a millennial scale.